Judge compares ballot vs EVM: Home state’s population exceeds Germany’s; VVPAT and Supreme Court also mentioned.

The population of my home state, West Bengal, exceeds that of Germany. During a recent hearing, Justice Dipankar Datta cautioned against undermining the system and cited the inapplicability of European examples such as Germany. This came after Advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing the Association for Democratic Reforms, referenced Germany’s voting system while arguing for the need to count and match VVPAT paper slips with EVM results.

Justice Datta questioned the population of Germany, to which Bhushan replied as being around 5 crore, highlighting that India has 50-60 crore voters. Justice Sanjiv Khanna pointed out the drawbacks of ballot voting and expressed a preference for the current system. The VVPAT system, or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail, allows voters to verify if their vote has been cast accurately and went to their chosen candidate.

Amid concerns about the EVM system, petitions have been filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms and activist Arun Kumar Agarwal, calling for the cross-verification of every vote and the counting of all VVPAT slips. One of the petitions seeks the court’s direction to ensure that voters can verify that their votes have been recorded accurately. Additionally, it argues for the transparent displaying of the VVPAT slip for about seven seconds after pressing the button on the EVM.